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If you read only one article about what happened to the students, teachers and schools in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, this is the one. Ashana Bigard is a parent of students in New Orleans. Elizabeth K. Jeffers taught in the NOLA district.

Turning New Orleans into an all-charter district may have raised test scores–although New Orleans is still a low-performing district in one of the nation’s lowest performing states–but as you will learn by reading this article, the transformation was a disaster for students, their families, their communities, and their teachers.

This article was produced by Our Schools. Ashana Bigard is the director of Amplify Justice, an educational advocate, and author of Beyond Resilience: Katrina 20. A dedicated mother of three, she serves as an education fellow for the Progressive magazine’s Public Schools Advocate project and is a director-producer of numerous video and audio productions. Follow her on Bluesky @AshanaBigard. Elizabeth K. Jeffers, PhD, is an assistant professor at the University of New Orleans who began teaching in pre-Katrina New Orleans public schools. Her scholarship focuses on school choice and community-based inquiry. Her research has been published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Policy, the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, and other scholarly journals. Follow her on Bluesky @ekjeffersphd.

To mark the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans, numerous articles and opinion pieces have appeared in prominent media outlets touting the supposed improvement of the city’s public school system since the storm.

Katrina’s immediate aftermath saw the state of Louisiana disempower the democratically elected school board by taking over the management of 107 out of 128 schools. This led to the termination of 7,600—mainly Black and women—teachers, paraprofessionals, cafeteria workers, clerical workers, principals, and other permanent employees, and the eventual conversion of all of the city’s public schools into privately managed charters.

A Washington Post column, “‘Never Seen Before:’ How Katrina Set off an Education Revolution,” by British journalist Ian Birrell, proclaimed the transformation a “miracle.” Another opinion piece in The 74, “The Inconvenient Success of New Orleans Schools” by Ravi Gupta, the founder and former CEOof a charter school network, stated that the New Orleans school system shaped by Katrina was “a model that should theoretically appeal to both sides of America’s education debates. It delivered the academic results that reformers promised while addressing the equity and community concerns that critics raised.”

As proof of their arguments, both authors pointed to a June 2025 report, “The New Orleans Post-Katrina School Reforms: 20 Years of Lessons” by Douglas N. Harris and Jamie M. Carroll of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans. Pulling from the data presented in that study, Birrell said the case for declaring New Orleans-style education reform a “remarkable success” is “pretty definitive,” and Gupta called this supposed success an “unequivocal conclusion.” As a longtime youth advocate and community leader and an assistant professor at the University of New Orleans, who was a public school teacher in the city, we invite you to consider whether this data alone proves that New Orleans public schools and the families they serve are better off after 20 years of “reform.”

Although Gupta warns against “[falling] into the tyranny of the anecdote when reporting on fraught education debates like those over the meaning of the New Orleans reforms,” we’d like to tell you about Rio, whose last name has been withheld for privacy reasons. Rio attended 12 different schools in New Orleans, many of which were shut down suddenly, before he finally graduated from a school that is now also closed. Rio’s story is not atypical of the human costs of the New Orleans school system, where closures are a defining feature and evidence that the disaster Katrina wrought on the schools is still happening.

Forced to traverse the fragmented charter system that has replaced the public system of neighborhood schools, New Orleans students are often traumatized by multiple school closures. Decades of researchattest to the academic, emotional, and economic harms that result from severing social connections that families, faculty, and staff have had with schools and with one another.

For instance, obtaining a job reference letter from a former teacher should be simple for students to do, but that task becomes an obstacle course for many young adults from New Orleans, like Rio. Black Man Rising, a national group providing outreach and mentorship for Black youth, had to intervene to help him obtain the letter that made the difference between him being able to financially support himself and being just another addition to the statistics of Black youth who are unemployed and incarcerated.

Rio’s story illustrates a central paradox of the New Orleans system: Black families and communities continue to be severed and displaced as a result of failed leadership at the federal, local, and state levels. While the storm may be over, the disaster continues. On the other hand, white children in New Orleans rarely experience school closures.

The near obliteration of democratic public schooling

In addition to severing families from their neighborhood schools and educators, Katrina reforms have nearly obliterated democratic participation in ways that would shock most Americans.

New York University professor Domingo Morel contends in his book Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy that state takeovers do not generally improve test scores or graduation rates; instead, they are about removing political power, as Black school boards have historically functioned as entryways for Black political leaders.

In a similar vein, Louisiana legislators, in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, passed Act 35 in November 2005, which expanded the state-run Recovery School District’s (RSD) jurisdiction over New Orleans public schools during an emergency session when voters were dispersed across the country and many were still searching for their loved ones. The new laws removed the parent and teacher approvals required for charter conversions.

State legislation also enabled the termination of the majority Black teaching force, gutting the teachers’ collective bargaining unit, United Teachers of New Orleans (American Federation of Teachers, Local 527), and further removing obstacles for top-down reform. Research conducted by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Kevin L. Henry and his co-author has shown how the “charter school authorization and application process” used in post-Katrina New Orleans “reproduces white dominance.” While another study published in the journal Urban Education points to how charter schools consolidate power “in ways that limit local Black political power.”

Consider the example of Kira Orange Jones, whose case perfectly illustrates how educational democracy has been dismantled. In 2011, Jones raised $478,000for her Board of Elementary and Secondary Education campaign—much of it from out-of-state donors connected to Democrats for Education Reform and charter school advocacy groups. Her opponent raised just $19,000, creating a 25-to-1 spending disadvantage. But the campaign money was just the beginning. Jones simultaneously served as executive director of Teach For America’s (TFA) Greater New Orleans chapter while sitting on the board that approved TFA’s $1 million state contract with Louisiana. When ethics complaints were filed in 2012, the Louisiana Ethics Board overruled its own staff’s recommendation that Jones choose between her TFA position and her board seat.

While NOLA Public Schools mandates charter school governance boards to include an alumnus or a parent, legal guardian, or grandparent, who is either elected or appointed, Katrina school reforms have nearly obliterated democratic participation. Parents often don’t find out when school board meetings are happening, let alone have access to board members’ email addresses or phone numbers to voice concerns. Even local reporters who tried to obtain basic contact information for charter school board members have been stonewalled. There is no state requirement that charter school boards meet at times that are convenient for working parents to attend.

The absence of neighborhood schools is an additional obstacle for parents who rely on public transportation. And although charter schools seemingly returned to an elected school board in 2018, the public has virtually no control over individual charter schools, which maintain complete autonomy over curricula, calendars, certification requirements, contracts, and daily operations.

Shadow suspensions and ‘behavior problems’

Louisiana has long been among the states with the highest rates of student suspensions and expulsions, and Black students are more than twice as likely to be suspended compared to white students and receive longer suspensions for identical infractions, according to an analysis of 2001to 2014 figures by Education Research Alliance for New Orleans. In New Orleans, suspension and expulsion rates rose sharply after the storm but then stabilized. Nevertheless, some charter schools continued to suspend and expel high percentages of students.

But that’s just the official data. More recently, several parents have reported that their children are being sent home from school without receiving official suspension papers. Elizabeth’s field notes attest to students’ reports of one charter school network sending students to “the RC room” (restorative center) where they are forced to sit in cubicles, complete detention assignments, and write apology letters in a secluded room. This shadow suspension system allows schools to push out Black students without creating the paper trail that might trigger oversight or intervention. Children lose days or weeks of education in bureaucratic limbo, with no formal process and no recourse. And large numbers of students, often labeled as “behavior problems,” remain enrolled in alternative schools, rather than mainstream degree programs, according to state data.

Community-rooted educators replaced by managers

New Orleans teachers once lived in their communities. Most were career educators who taught generations of children, creating lasting bonds that extended far beyond the classroom.

Ashana experienced this personally at a small school called New Orleans Free School. As someone who is extremely dyslexic, she felt inadequate throughout most of her educational life until she encountered teachers like Woody, Janice, Jeanette, and Jim—two of whom, Jeanette and Jim, have since passed away. Woody still leaves encouraging comments under articles she has published, telling her he is proud of her. He, along with the others, encouraged her and insisted she could be brilliant despite her spelling difficulties. They told her she could be a writer. They emphasized that we all have different skill sets that we can develop, and that none of us is perfect, but that we can practice and grow.

This encouragement didn’t end when Ashana left Free School. The advice and support continue today. That’s what it means to have authentic relationships with your teachers. That’s what it means to be rooted in your community. Unfortunately, Ashana didn’t have the opportunity to send her children to that school to be educated by those incredible educators. The school that gave her a love of learning shut down.

The structure of charter schools severs critical bonds between schools and families. For instance, in her book Beyond Resilience: Katrina 20 Ashana recounts a teacher reaching out to her for resources to help with one of her students years before the storm. The child’s mother, who worked two jobs as a housekeeper and restaurant server, struggled to care for her seven children.

Her nine-year-old son often arrived at school dirty and disheveled because their washing machine had broken, and despite the mother’s instructions, the children didn’t wash their uniforms in the tub while she worked overnight shifts. Although the mother worked tirelessly, her extremely low reading level meant she was unaware of how to apply for assistance programs that could have helped her family. Most importantly, she probably didn’t believe she qualified for help. This teacher understood the family’s circumstances and worked to connect them with resources rather than simply reporting the situation to authorities.

This kind of close relationship between educators and families has become increasingly rare in the Katrina experiment. For instance, Ashana encountered a similar situation that ended differently. A family facing tough times was reported to the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) multiple times for neglect. When OCFS attempted to provide services, the mother, terrified that her children would be taken and placed in foster care as she had been, and having suffered abuse in that system, fled Orleans Parish with her children. She moved them to a motel in St. Bernard Parish, leaving everything behind. The children weren’t enrolled in school for almost a year until someone tracked them down and helped them return to the city and reintegrate into the school.

Somehow, punitive measures for Black parents and children have been equated with success—which raises the question: What exactly is the reform proponents’ definition of success, and what was the goal from the outset?

The current system has replaced community-based educators with a top-heavy administrative structure. New Orleans charter schools spend significantly more money on administration, even as teacher shortages remain high. For instance, InspireNola Charter Schools, which only manages seven schools, paid three executives a total of $667,000 for the fiscal year 2023.

Meanwhile, the constant “churning” of schools and the absence of a collective bargaining agreement have led to a larger system that dehumanizes teachers. In fact, the RSD required certified teachers who chose to return to their pre-Katrina schools to complete a “basic skills test” (akin to a literacy test).

But that was only the beginning of the disaster for New Orleans educators. One Black veteran explained to Elizabeth: “The RSD was bouncing teachers around like balls.” That is, the state takeover district issued letters labeling numerous experienced teachers as “surplus” when their schools transformed into charters. Many of these schools recruited inexperienced teachers who were expendable, accepted lower salaries, and could be programmed to adhere to the ideology of reform. The absence of collective bargaining power, arbitrary closures, and charter takeovers eventually led many career teachers to “choose” between commuting several hours a day to schools in outlying parishes and changing careers. Twenty years after the district’s purging of its unionized teachers (the United Teachers of New Orleans), only five of the city’s 90 charter schools are unionized.

In another example, Ashana recounts in her book about how a teacher whom she advocated for brought a doctor’s note to her school’s chief financial officer to document a urinary tract infection and request restroom breaks. The administrators emailed her to offer reimbursement for adult diapers. This example of denying teachers basic respect and humanity illustrates what is seen as a continual disaster. If educators are treated this way, imagine the conditions students face.

The cruel reality of ‘choice’

The current “choice” system has created impossible decisions for families. Consider the mother in New Orleans East who must choose each morning which of her two children to accompany to their bus stop, because the system doesn’t allow siblings to attend the same school. She would have to explain to her young daughter, who is clutching a bright orange whistle for safety, “Today I’m going to stand with your brother, but tomorrow it’ll be your turn.” The little girl, frightened at the prospect of standing alone, pleads with her mother, but is told, “I’m sorry, you know this is just the way it is for right now.”

This mother, with tears in her eyes as her children clung to her legs, captured the cruel reality. With this new choice system, she doesn’t get to choose to have both of her children sent to the same school. She gets to choose which one she can stand with every morning. That’s no choice at all.

Propaganda masquerading as research….

I have quoted too much already. Open the link to finish this sobering and important article.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Disruption, Ethics, Fake, History, Hoax, Injustice, New Orleans, Students, Teachers

The First Review of My New Book!

By dianeravitch

October 3, 2025 //

Veteran journalist Eleanor Bader published the very first review of my new book!

It’s a great review!

The official publication date is October 20, but books are now in print and available.

My first appearance to talk about the book will be in my home town: Brooklyn, New York, on October 21 at 6 pm at the Brooklyn Heights branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

I will have a conversation with the brilliant Leonie Haimson, leader of Class Size Matters.

I’m not traveling to promote the book, but I am doing Zooms. I will be speaking to educators in North Carolina on October 22. To learn more about it, contact Yevonne Brannon of Public Schools First NC at ybrannon@gmail.com.

Categories Education Reform, Parents, Personal, Privatization, Students, Teachers, Vouchers

NOLA Parent: After 20 Years of “Ed Reform,” a $1 Billion Failure

By dianeravitch

September 24, 2025 //

Ashana Bigard is a parent activist in New Orleans. From her perspective as a parent leader and as the parent of a child with special needs, the New Orleans experiment has been a very expensive flop.

She wrote this overview for Public Voices for Public Schools:

Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, the nation’s most radical education overhaul has produced stunning inequality alongside modest test gains

As I sit in Bricolage Academy’s office, frustrated but trying to remain pleasant, I’m having the same conversation again about my son. He’s on the autism spectrum. He is high performing, extremely quiet, and sweet. Despite his IEP, he wasn’t receiving the required services. The special education coordinator had quit in frustration, the school counselor was cut due to budget issues, and my fifth-grader was falling through the cracks.

I’m not just any parent. I’m an advocate who has worked with the CEO since the school’s creation. I have written for national magazines about our system’s problems and challenged the school’s “diversity by design” narrative. Yet here I was, fighting for basic services. If this is my experience, imagine what average parents face.

The Numbers Don’t Add Up

Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina replaced New Orleans’ traditional public schools with the nation’s first all-charter system, the grand experiment presents a troubling paradox. With half the students and double the funding, the system has achieved modest academic gains while disempowering the communities it promised to serve.

Before Katrina, New Orleans educated over 65,000 students in 126 schools. Today, just 47,667 students attend 70 schools–a 27% enrollment reduction. Yet per-pupil spending has exploded to approximately $17,000-$20,000, significantly above Louisiana’s state average.

“When you have half the students and twice the resources, you should see transformational results,” says Neil Ranu, a civil rights attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Instead, we see money flowing upward to administrators while classrooms struggle.”

The money trail is revealing. Charter CEOs earn over $200,000 annually, while average teachers make between $44,000-$55,000 if they stay long enough.

The Human Cost

The city’s teacher turnover rate of 28% for new educators doubles that of comparable cities. The displacement began when the state fired the entire education workforce after Katrina, including over 4,000 teachers with an average of 15 years of experience. The teaching force dropped from 71% Black to under 50%.

When ‘Success’ Crumbles

The system’s fragility became apparent at John F. Kennedy High School in spring 2019. On graduation day, 177 students walked across the stage. A month later, state auditors revealed nearly half were ineligible to graduate due to grade changes from F’s to D’s, improper credit recovery, and students taking unsupervised classes at home.

Antonio Travis, director of Black Man Rising, mentored several affected students. “There was shame, self-blame. Many felt they wouldn’t be successful in college.” Families canceled graduation celebrations, uncertain about the future.

The Illusion of Choice

Parents quickly learn that “choice” often means choosing between bad options, especially for children with special needs. At Benjamin Franklin High School, Louisiana’s top-ranked public school, students from minority backgrounds face significant admission barriers. The school serves 39% white students in a city where whites comprise only 10% of public enrollment.

Special Education Crisis

In 2010, ten families sued the state over charter schools admitting too few special-needs students and failing to provide proper services. The resulting federal consent decree remains in effect today, with monitors continuing to find systematic violations, including parents being excluded from meetings, services not being provided, and evaluations being denied.

Right now, Louisiana U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey is currently presiding over the dissolution of the special-needs consent decree related to New Orleans schools. Because New Orleans public schools have no oversight, and no unions to fight to ensure the law is followed, we, as parents of children with special needs, have to fight to get our stories to the judge so hopefully he will keep it in place.

Economic Verdict

For a system serving 84% Black students, the economic impact is devastating. The racial wealth gap has widened dramatically since Katrina. White households now hold 13 times the wealth of Black families–$181,000 versus $18,000 median net worth. New Orleans went from 67% Black to 57%, losing over 120,000 Black residents.

Missing Pieces

Walk through charter schools and notice what’s absent or insufficient. Arts programs have declined; fewer offer pre-kindergarten, and students average 35-minute bus commutes. Basic skills, such as cursive instruction—required by state law for signing legal documents—are often ignored. “The children only learn what’s tested,” observes one advocate. “Everything else gets cut.”

The Honest Assessment

As the 20th anniversary of Katrina approaches,New Orleans offers a sobering lesson. With unprecedented resources and freedom, the charter system produced modest academic gains alongside community economic decline and systematic exclusion of vulnerable students.

“When people ask if they should move out of the city for better education,” says one advocate, “my answer is: if you can afford to move, you should. This system is not built to support our children.”

The comment hangs like an indictment not just of a school system, but of a 20-year experiment that promised everything and delivered prosperity for some, displacement for others, and continued struggle for families who need excellent public education most.

Ashana Bigard is a fifth generation New Orleanian and lifelong resident of the Crescent City. A mother of three, Ashana is a tireless advocate for equity and social justice, especially in her work advocating for children and families in New Orleans and Louisiana. She leads the Education Justice Project of New Orleans, where she organizes and advocates for the rights of students and parents. Ashana is an adult ally advisor to United Students of New Orleans. She also serves as a Community Faculty member with Tulane University’s Center for Public Service.

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Louisiana, New Orleans, Parents, Privatization, Special Education, Students

Richard Rothstein: The Soft Bigotry of High Expectations

By dianeravitch

September 16, 2025 //

This may be the most important article you will read today.

Richard Rothstein has had a distinguished career as a journalist who writes about social science, most notably, achievement gaps, housing segregation, and the impact of poverty on academic performance. He has long been a fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and before that was education editor of The New York Times.

Rothstein writes here about the origins of the belief that teachers are directly responsible for student academic performance. If students score poorly on tests, goes the theory, it’s because their teachers have low expectations for them. In the case of black students, teachers’ racism is likely to explain their low expectations. From this perspective, No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top made perfect sense. The teachers needed high expectations or needed to be fired.

Rothstein writes:

Social psychologist Robert Rosenthal died at the age of 90 last month. He was best known for his 1968 book, Pygmalion in the Classroom, co-authored by Lenore Jacobson, an elementary school principal in South San Francisco.

No book in the second half of the 20th century did more, unintentionally perhaps, to undermine support for public education, and thus diminish educational opportunities for so many children, especially Black and Hispanic children, to this day. The book and its aftermath put the onus solely on teacher performance when it came to student achievement, disregarding so many critically important socioeconomic factors—at the top of the list, residential segregation.
How did it do that?

The book described an experiment conducted in Ms. Jacobson’s school in 1965. The authors gave pupils an IQ test and then randomly divided the test takers into two groups. They falsely told teachers that results showed that students in one of the groups were poised to dramatically raise their performance in the following year, while the others would not likely demonstrate similar improvement.

At the end of that year, they tested students again and found that the first and second graders in the group that was predicted to improve did so on average, while those in the other group did not. The book, as well as academic articles that Dr. Rosenthal and Ms. Jacobson published, claimed that the experiment showed that teacher expectations had a powerful influence on student achievement, especially of young children. Pupils whose teachers were told were more likely to improve then apparently worked harder to meet their teachers’ faith in them.1

Some psychologists were skeptical, believing that the experimental design was not sufficiently rigorous to support such a revolutionary conclusion. Even the reported results were ambiguous. Teacher expectations had no similar impact on children in grades three through six. Similar experiments elsewhere did not confirm the results even for first and second graders.2

Nonetheless, the book was very influential.
In the decades after Pygmalion, other studies examined teacher expectations. They showed that teachers have greater expectations of higher achieving students but couldn’t determine whether the teacher attitudes helped to cause better pupil performance. Perhaps teachers only developed those expectations after seeing that students were higher achieving.3 Only an experimental study, like Pygmalion, could establish causality, but contemporary ethical standards would often prohibit such experiments, requiring, as they must, lying to teachers about their students’ data.

Minority children in the South San Francisco school where Rosenthal and Jacobson experimented were Mexican-origin, not African American. Yet ignoring how scanty the evidence was, education policymakers concluded from their research that the Black-white gap in test scores at all grade levels resulted from teachers of Black children not expecting their pupils to do well. And that, they reasoned, should be an easy problem to solve—holding teachers accountable for results would force them to abandon the racial stereotypes that were keeping children behind.

The accountability movement grew in intensity during the Bill Clinton administration, while in Texas, Governor George W. Bush implemented a mandatory standardized testing program whose publicized results, he thought, would force teachers to improve by shaming them for the lower scores of their poorer Black and Hispanic pupils.

In 2000, Bush was elected president; his campaign promised to demolish teachers’ “soft bigotry of low expectations.” During his first year in office, he led a bipartisan congressional majority to adopt the “No Child Left Behind Act” that required every state to conduct annual standardized testing in reading and math for pupils in the third through eighth grades.

Shortly after the bill was signed, I met with the congressional staffer who had been primarily responsible for writing the legislation. She predicted that within two years, the publication of test scores would so embarrass teachers that they would work harder, with the result that racial differences in academic achievement would evaporate entirely.

Nothing of that sort has happened. Although test performance of both Black and white students has improved somewhat, the gap is not much different than it was two decades ago. But the public reputation of our teaching force has continued to deteriorate, as a conclusion spread that failure to equalize test results could be remedied by gimmicks like naming a school’s classrooms for the Ivy League colleges that teachers expected their students to attend.4

Enthusiasm for charter schools escalated from a belief that operators could choose teachers with higher expectations, yet charter schools have not done any better (and in many cases worse) in closing the gap, once the sector’s ability to select students less likely to fail (and expel students who do) is taken into account.5

In 2008, I taught an education policy course for master’s degree candidates, many of whom had taught for two years in the Teach for America (TFA) program. It placed recent college graduates without teacher credentials in schools for lower-income Black and Hispanic students.

Funded heavily by private philanthropies, TFA embraced the low-expectations theory of below-average performance. Prior to their teaching assignments, TFA corps members were required to attend a summer institute whose curriculum featured a unit entitled “The Power of My Own Expectations” and required them to embrace the “mindset” of “I am totally responsible for the academic achievement of my students.”

None of my master’s degree students claimed that in their two years of teaching, their high expectations actually produced unusually high achievement. But most were so immunized against evidence and experience that they enrolled in a graduate program with the intention of creating new charter schools infused with high expectations. Only a few wondered what had gone wrong with their theory, besides having goals that still weren’t high enough.

Certainly, there are teachers with low expectations and harmful racial stereotypes, and it would be beneficial if those who can’t be trained to improve were removed from the profession. But I’ve visited many schools serving disadvantaged students. Most teachers I observed, white and Black, were dedicated, hard-working, engaged with their students, and frustrated about the social and economic challenges with which children daily came to school. I don’t claim that my observations were representative; I was more likely to be invited to visit schools that took great pride in their efforts, despite conditions they struggled to overcome.

No matter how high their expectations, teachers can’t do much about:

*their pupils’ higher rates of lead poisoning that impact cognitive ability;

*more frequent asthma—the result of living with more pollution, near industrial facilities, in less-well maintained buildings with more vermin in the environment—that may bring them to school drowsy from being awake at night, wheezing;

*neighborhoods without supermarkets that sell fresh and healthy food;

*stress intensified by being stopped and frisked by police without cause, and a discriminatory criminal justice system that disproportionately imprisons their fathers and brothers for trivial offenses;

*frequent moves due to rising rents, or landlords’ failure to keep units in habitable condition;

*absenteeism from a need to stay home to care for younger siblings while parents race from one low-wage job to another;

*poor health from living in neighborhoods with fewer primary care physicians or dentists;

*lower parental education levels that result in less academic support at home, combined with less adequate access to technology, a problem exacerbated since the pandemic;6

*and many other socioeconomic impediments to learning.7

Not every Black child suffers from these deprivations that affect their ability to take full advantage of the education that schools offer. But many do. Concentrating disadvantaged pupils in poorly resourced schools in poorly resourced and segregated neighborhoods overwhelms instructional and support staffs.

Such realities contributed to my conclusion that residential segregation, not low teacher expectations, was the most serious problem faced by U.S. education. It is what led to my recent books, The Color of Law, and its sequel (co-authored by my daughter, Leah Rothstein), Just Action; How to challenge segregation enacted under the Color of Law.

Robert Rosenthal’s Pygmalion theory set the stage for a national willingness to deny educational disparities’ true causes: the unconstitutional and unlawful public policies that imposed racial segregation upon our nation.

Footnotes:

1. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson. 1968. Pygmalion in the Classroom: teacher expectation and pupils’ intellectual development. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston). For a technical summary by the authors, see. Rosenthal and Jacobson, “Pygmalion in the Classroom.” The Urban Review 3, September, 1968: 16-20.

2. See “Pygmalion in the Classroom.” The Urban Review 3, September, 1968, footnote on p. 19.

3. For example, see Thomas L. Good, Natasha Sterzinger, and Alyson Lavigne. 2018. “Expectation Effects: Pygmalion and the initial 20 years of research.” Educational Research and Evaluation 24 (3-5): 99-123.

4. See, for example, Richard Rothstein. 2010. “An overemphasis on teachers.” Commentary, Economic Policy Institute, October 18.

5. Martin Carnoy, et al. 2005. The Charter School Dust-Up. (Washington, D.C.: The Economic Policy Institute).

6. In early 2020, I wrote that the pandemic would widen the achievement gap. The consequences turned out to be worse than I could have imagined. Teacher expectations had nothing to do with it. Richard Rothstein. 2020. “The Coronavirus Will Explode Achievement Gaps in Education.” Shelterforce.org, April 13.

7. Richard Rothstein. 2004. Class and Schools. Using social, economic, and educational reform to close the black–white achievement gap. (Washington, D.C.: The Economic Policy Institute).

The text of this post was originally published on January 30, 2024 on the Working Economics Blog of the Economic Policy Institute.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Parents, Poverty, Students

Pastors for Texas Children Speak Out Against the Harm of Standardized Testing

By dianeravitch

September 3, 2025 //

Our allies at Pastors for Texas Chuldren fought courageously against the passage of voucher legislation but were ultimately defeated by Governor Abbott’s plan to oust moderate Republicans from the legislature.

Funded by Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass and Texas billionaires Farris Wilks and Tim Dunn, both of whom are Christian pastors and nationalists, Abbott managed to defeat the moderate Republicans who worked with Democrats to beat vouchers.

Now the Pastors have set their sights on minimizing the damage done to children by standardized testing. For many years, Texas legislators have been obsessed with test scores. They never consider the harms done by the tests to students, teachers, and the love of learning.

The Pastors did, and they issued this statement:

At Pastors for Texas Children, we believe every child is a precious gift of God, created with unique abilities and potential. Yet for decades, our public schools have been forced to rely on standardized testing as the primary measure of learning and progress. These tests were designed with good intentions, but in practice, they have done real harm to our children, our teachers, and our schools.

Standardized testing narrows the curriculum, reducing education to what can be measured on a multiple-choice exam. It discourages creativity, critical thinking, and the joy of learning. Instead of nurturing a child’s individual talents, testing forces them into a one-size-fits-all mold. For many students, especially those from vulnerable communities, these tests add unnecessary stress and stigma, often labeling children by a single score rather than recognizing their God-given worth.

Teachers, too, are burdened. Their ability to teach with passion and flexibility is restricted when their professional value is tied to test results. Entire classrooms are transformed into test-prep factories, rather than places of discovery, curiosity, and growth. Public schools—the foundation of our democracy—are weakened when accountability is reduced to a number on a page.

HB 8 purports to mitigate the damages of standardized testing and fails. The version advancing out of the Senate is even worse. There is still time to fix this bill, but the clock is ticking. Call your State Representative now and tell them to remove high stakes from these assessments and strip TEA of its authority to administer them.

Our faith calls us to see children as whole beings, not data points. We must move toward assessments that encourage true learning, affirm student progress, and honor the dedicated work of educators. Texas children deserve classrooms that inspire and equip them, not testing regimes that drain and demean them.

We urge you to join us in advocating for an end to the overreliance on standardized testing in Texas public schools. Let us stand together for education that celebrates the fullness of every child’s potential.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Education Industry, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Real Education, Standardized Testing, Students, Texas, Vouchers

Arnold and Carol Hillman: What We Learned in Our Nine Years in South Carolina

By dianeravitch

July 23, 2025 //

Arnold and Carol Hillman spent their careers as educators in Pennsylvania. When they retired, they decided to live in a retirement community in South Carolina. But while other retirees were playing golf or relaxing at the pool, they decided to get involved in rural schools. They wanted to be helpful. After nine years in South Carolina, they decided to move closer to their children, so they moved to Massachusetts. I invited them to write about their experiences in South Carolina. And Arnold wrote this account, edited by Carol.

We have always been compulsive people. On a cold winter’s day in February of 2015, we decided to move to a senior community (Sun City) in Bluffton, South Carolina. We did have some friends there who encouraged us to join them. So, on July 31st of that year, we moved there— lock, stock and barrel.

It wasn’t more than a week or two, after disposing of our many boxes, that we decided to go to a local school board meeting. We lived in an especially wealthy area of SC. The reason for its wealth were the many grey heads that retired to SC because of the meager taxes that one had to pay.

We were very surprised at the board meeting. There were issues that were foreign to us. Although much of the meeting revolved around educational issues, the tone of the meeting was not to our liking. For one thing, they never mentioned the students or education. The superintendent acted as if he was the school district attorney. He was later fired because of ethics violations. An elderly member of the board spoke about books that he did not like and made no sense. The meeting seemed disorganized from our perspective. We came away from the meeting with the idea of finding out more about education in South Carolina.

Since we were familiar with the superintendent’s organization in Pennsylvania, we discovered that the then Superintendent of Education in South Carolina was the former executive director of the SC organization of superintendents. We called her, Molly Spearman, and invoked our PA connection and got to speak with her.

We said that we had been advocates for rural schools and communities for many years and would like to see if we could be of some assistance to them here in South Carolina. She told us of five rural school districts around the area in which we lived and suggested that we give them a call.

We called all five and only one returned our call. Dr. Vashti Washington, Superintendent of the Jasper County School District, one of the poorest districts in the state, said that she would be happy to see us and work out some things that we could do in the district.

We eventually began a program called “Roso” – Reach one Save one. It was already in the works at the Ridgeland Hardeeville High School. The assistant principal, L.R. Dinkins, had been looking for someone to help him get it started, and we were the ones.

The program involved mentoring 10 young men and 10 young women and having them mentor fifth graders who were having trouble in school. The program lasted from 2015-2021. It ended when Covid began. However, the students that we worked with are still in touch with us and many have been successful in their lives. Others have not had that kind of success.

During the time we were working at Ridgeland Hardeeville, we decided that we would try to visit as many rural school districts as we could. We wound up visiting 21 districts out of about 35 (consolidation has made that 30 rural districts).

We were astonished at what we saw in each of those districts. What we saw was the equivalent of shoveling against the tide. Administrators and teachers do their best without the proper resources.

In some districts the buildings were dilapidated. One in particular startled us when we saw sewage seeping into the hallways. Fortunately, that school was closed and replaced by a new building.

Many school districts lacked teachers of science, math, and special education. Many rural districts recruited foreign teachers to fill vacancies, but these teachers often had difficulty communicating in English. Those who stayed for more than a year became more fluent in English and more successful as teachers. Nonetheless, rural districts often lacked the courses available in economically advantaged districts.

Most rural districts lacked student services. Guidance counselors and psychologists were in short supply, as were career counselors and STEM counselors.

Like many other rural areas across the country, Internet connections are not readily available in rural South Carolina. Thus many schools were unable to produce online coursework for their students during the pandemic.

Some of the outcomes were spectacular, but in the end the children did not get all that they needed for success in life.

As we have learned during our time in South Carolina, and over the past year, the children in the rural areas of South Carolina must climb mountains to gain the same kind of success that their brothers and sisters have in the well-resourced school districts.

Some statistics will show the differences. At the beginning of the 2024-25 school year there were 1,043 open positions for educators in South Carolina. Most of these vacancies were in rural school districts. From January 2020 till now, of the 75 school districts in SC, only 21 school districts have retained their school superintendents. Of those 72% that have left, many of them are from rural school districts.

South Carolina’s legislature and administration have succeeded in raising teachers’ salaries. However, their priorities have not addressed the problems with resources for rural schools. The new Superintendent of education is a right-wing conservative, with a former Heritage Foundation background and a less than stellar resume in education. She has instigated a program in cooperation with Prager University that will provide school districts with videos that rewrite American history to minimize the underside of the past..

The legislature and the administration have viewed budget surpluses as a means of getting votes from their constituents. Although state taxes are low, they have consistently rebated taxes to taxpayers. In the 2022 legislative session they rebated almost one billion dollars. This was done when school districts and other parts of the state could have used those funds to improve the number of children and other needy folks.

South Carolina does not fare well in comparison with other states in the nation when it comes to education. Looking at 4 differing rating agencies, SC ranks 44th, 43rd, 41st and 41st. You may not agree that these are the most accurate numbers, but a number of agencies use many variables to come to these conclusions.

And how is South Carolina doing in comparison to other states and the nation on national tests such as the ACTs? According to the South Carolina Department of Education and their statistics, the average of all states using an ACT composite is 19.4. South Carolina’s composite score is 18.4. The ACT is widely used in Southern and Mid-Western states. There are 24 states that use it primarily and of the 24, two states switched to the SATs, but still use the ACTs. Many of the rural school districts are far below the 18.4 mean.

To counter some of these negative things about South Carolina education, Carol and I, along with several rural school superintendents, created an organization called SCORS (South Carolina Organization of Rural Schools). Its purpose was to alert South Carolinians to the plight of rural schools and communities. We did research, wrotearticles, and even interviewed gubernatorial candidates. Most of what we did may have helped a small bit, but not enough to move either the legislature or the administration.

It will take many years and the rise of a new generation before anything changes in South Carolina. We still are in contact with many of the young people whom we mentored.

Most of the students that we mentored came from very economically depressed backgrounds. Their parents sometimes worked two or three jobs. The students also worked to supplement family incomes. They were wonderful youngsters who would have had many more opportunities if they lived in different states.

We called the groups that we mentored Jasper Gentlemen (they all lived in Jasper County). The young ladies were named Diamonds and Pearls. As you suspect, I worked with the young men and Carol the young ladies. There were about 25 students in all. We took them to colleges in South Carolina and even sent some of them up to Howard University in Washington on bus trips set up by a friend who was the head of the Howard alumni association of South Carolina. Of all the students we mentored, none of them dropped out of high school. They all graduated.

I believe only about 30% of them went on to college. Many of the parents wanted the youngsters to stay home and did not want them to leave the area. Money was the biggest problem. The cost of college, even the state schools, was too much for the family to fund. Even with Pell grants and other scholarships it was just too much.

We did offer them some scholarships that we funded personally. Some of the students dropped out after their freshman year. We even had some athletes who got partial scholarships that did not last. Some of the South Carolina colleges, both public and private, had terrible 4-year graduation rates. One of them, a state school, had a 4-year graduation rate of 14.5%.

The “Corridor of Shame” refers to the rural school districts in South Carolina along route 95. It was part of a short documentary about education in South Carolina by Pat Conroy, whose book is about his teaching in Daufuskie Island. Most of the school districts in that area were predominantly African American.

It is difficult to describe the pervasive racism in South Carolina. It is not hidden. It is all on the surface. As members of the NAACP, Carol and I saw it everywhere–from gerrymandering of voting districts to the daily treatment of the African-American community. The neglect of human capital in South Carolina is astounding. Those in charge do not see education as an important economic development tool. Nor do they consider the tragic waste of human potential that is the result of neglecting education.

Here is an example of the blatant racism we saw. A good friend of ours–a person with a doctorate who teaches at a university—would always ask us to call to make restaurant reservations. She also asked that we call stores to get information about products. The rude treatment she received at car dealerships and local stores was beyond our comprehension. Of course, she is Black.

The children had to climb huge barriers compared to most students in the United States to get to college. It is a wonder to Carol and me that any of them were able to do it. We are so proud of some of them who not only got through school but went on to get master’s degrees. We are still not sure if we made a difference, but we tried.

We are proud of our mentees. Some have climbed over the barriers to achieve success. Jeremiah comes from a wonderful family with few resources. He is the first of his siblings to go to college. He is a phenomenal football player and an even better student. He hopes to play in the NFL in a few years. He graduated from Hampton University and is studying for his master’s degree in logistics at Alabama State. He has one year of football eligibility. To complete his college degree, he took 21 credits in his final semester and was saddened when he got one B+ instead of all As.

Irvin was the valedictorian in his senior year at Ridgeland Hardeeville High School. He was also the drum major in the band, among many extracurricular activities. He went to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona, Florida. He applied for a job at Boeing. It took a year and some to get his security clearance. While he was waiting, he worked in construction. He now works at Boeing in Virginia on things he cannot tell me about.

Rashamel is closer to us than any of the other students. We have known him for 10 years. He is not only a fine student but a wonderful basketballl player. When he was in high school, he wrote for the local newspaper. They seem to have been written by a professional. His post-high school years were confounded by advice he got from his coaches to go to a community college in Rochester, New York. The school was set up for basketball. Since Rashamel was not an inner-city African American, his coach had no clue about how to approach him. He was placed in remedial courses. He got As and A+s. However, since these courses were non-credited, he was behind 15 credits when he left. He spent two years at South Carolina State, an HBCU, and did well academically. He did not enjoy playing there. He finally left and had a great year at Pfeiffer University in North Carolina. He is now taking his master’s degree in sports psychology and working two jobs in Augusta, Georgia.

Lakiasa entered the service because she did not know what she wanted to do in college. She enlisted in the Army where she was trained to help military personnel deal with financial problems. In the Army, she realized that she had grown up very poor. Her Army experience taught her how to handle money. In the three years that she has been in the Army, she has purchased her first car and is the only one in her family who has bought a house. Because she likes to help people, she has made plans to study and become a radiology technician.

Lataye went to a leadership camp between her sophomore and junior year in high school, sponsored by Clemson University. It was the first time she had seen a waterfall, went swimming in a lake, and sat around a campfire singing songs. As a result of that experience, she was determined to go to college. She was studying to be a teacher when she was invited to be a volunteer in the college’s lab school, where she taught math to fifth graders and followed them through their eighth grade year. She made the honor society’s

Geovana was her family’s interpreter. She was expected to go to college. She thought seriously about becoming an attorney. She now wants to be a peduatrician. She is working in a dermatologist’s office for the summer. She will spend a post-college year working while studying for the MCATS.

In the Fall of 2023, I was afflicted with chronic kidney disease. It came to a point where I was about to have dialysis. The only good hospital in the state was in Charleston. They invented a procedure that allowed me to get back to normal.

However, our children insisted that we move closer to them. We went up to Massachusetts to look around for a place that was close to our daughter. We found a continuous care community and moved in on October 23, 2024. We have been there ever since.

As I said, we are still in contact with many of the students we mentored and try and help out any way that we can. We are also in contact with a number of families. Many of them are still not doing well. We hope that the future holds more positive results for them. We miss them all.

Categories Funding, Poverty, Rural Schools, South Carolina, Students

Florida: Rare Public Protest Kills GOP Plan to Cut Funding for AP CLASSES

By dianeravitch

June 25, 2025 //

Scott Maxwell, opinion columnist for The Orlando Sentinel, wrote about the unusual public protest against the Legislature’s plan to cut funding for AP classes in public schools. For years, Republicans who run the state have inflicted blow after blow on the public schools, preferring to divert billions of public dollars to private and religious schools. But not this time. This time, the public organized fought back and blocked the latest effort to inflict damage on the state’s public schools.

Maxwell writes:

Chalk one up for the Floridians who are willing to stand up and make themselves heard.
Tallahassee politicians were forced last week to abandon their plans to gut funding for AP classes in public schools after they ran into something they rarely encounter in this state — a wall of public opposition.

GOP lawmakers have been pulling the rug out from under public education for the better part of two decades, driving away teachers, injecting political wars into classrooms and diverting public money to private schools. But their plan to cut funding to AP, IB and dual enrollment programs was a bridge too far.

Why? Because this plan to sabotage public schools would’ve impacted a population beyond the marginalized families that these insulated politicians are usually happy to short-change. Legislators were trying to undercut the college prospects of kids who go to high school in Windermere and Winter Park — the children of parents who normally write campaign checks.

And everyone banded together to object.
“I was getting emails from people asking: ‘What do I do? How do I help? Who do I email?’” said Orange County School Board member Stephanie Vanos. “And before long, we started hearing legislators saying: ‘Please make the parents stop emailing us. Please, just make it stop.’”

My thanks to those of you who did not relent, because this idea was as bone-headed as it was backwards.

Basically, Republican lawmakers in both chambers wanted to cut funding allocated for AP (Advanced Placement), IB (International Baccalaureate), AICE (Advanced International Certificate of Education) and even dual enrollment programs at places like Valencia College for students who want to get ahead.

One of the most nonsensical parts about this attack was that it targeted a program that awarded funding based on students who passed these courses. In other words, one that only paid for successful results.

The politicians were also targeting one of the few things Florida really does well in public schools. While Florida’s scores for the SAT and other tests have plummeted in recent years, Florida’s AP test scores have historically been quite good. The College Board ranked Florida in the Top 5 for passage rate in 2021, largely because of this successful and aggressive funding model.

So Republican lawmakers were attacking something that was both successful and popular, affecting more than 110,000 students.
There was no valid reason for this funding cut, other than trying to make public schools less attractive.

See, AP classes are one of the advantages public schools have over many private schools, especially the fly-by-night voucher ones that hire uncertified teachers and can’t even think about offering classes like AP calculus, Chinese and 3-D art and design.

“These are the programs that are among the most popular in our high schools,” Vanos said. “Families come back to our high schools specifically for these programs.”

So parents and supporters of public education banded together and spoke up.

I sensed a revolt brewing as soon as I published a column on the topic a few weeks ago entitled: “Cutting AP classes would dumb down Florida schools.”

House Republicans had just advanced their defunding plan by a vote of 22-6 in a subcommittee, and I urged anyone who thought this was a rotten idea to let their lawmakers know. Boy, did they.

One reader said she and her sister, a retired teacher, were gathering as many others as possible to get “riled up to action.”

Another said she sent Gov. Ron DeSantis an email that asked him a simple question: “Are you TRYING to drive us out of the Republican Party?”
Conservatives objected alongside liberals.

Seniors alongside teens. I heard from everyone from fired-up retirees in Osceola County to a genuinely perplexed Eagle Scout in Maitland.
Even Florida TV stations that usually pay more attention to car crashes than legislative subcommittees carried stories about Floridians who were up in arms.

Local elected officials noticed the widespread discontent and decided to weigh in as well. Jacksonville’s large and heavily Republican city council voted 16-1 to tell GOP lawmakers to back off their plan to sabotage AP classes.

The pressure ultimately worked. When leaders from both chambers went behind closed doors last week to hash out their final budget proposal, they ditched this latest attack on public schools in quiet, unceremonial fashion.

Imagine for a moment if Floridians used their voices more often.

Not just to protect public education, but to support other issues that the vast majority of Floridians on both sides of the aisle support.
We might not live in a state where more than 20,000 families grappling with special needs are stuck on a years-long waiting list for services.

Or a state that has allowed so much pollution to kill so many manatees that two rounds of federal judges had to step in to tell the state it had to stop allowing the slaughter of the state’s official marine mammal.

It’s often said that we get the government we deserve. But we also get the government we demand.

In this case, Floridians demanded that the politicians take their stinkin’ hands off a successful educational program that has helped countless students get a head start in college, careers and life.

Imagine if we all did that more often.
“Advocacy works,” Vanos said. “It’s all about people power.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Curriculum, DeSantis, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Florida, Funding, Ignorance, Parents, Students

Arizona: Cost of Universal Vouchers Reaches $872 Million per Year

By dianeravitch

June 17, 2025 //

The Grand Canyon Institute has been tracking the growth and cost of vouchers and charter schools in Arizona for several years. The vast majority of students who take vouchers (almost 3/4). But this year, a larger share were drawn from district schools and charter schools.

The report contains a number of excellent graphics. Open the lin to see them.

This is the Grand Canyon Institute release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Cost of Universal ESA Vouchers

Contact: Dave Wells, Research Director, dwells@azgci.org or 602.595.1025 ex. 2.

Summary of Findings

73% of Universal ESA voucher enrollees have never attended district or charter schools (including adjustments for students entering Kindergarten).
In FY2025, however, net new Universal ESA voucher enrollees primarily came from charter and district schools.
While the total cost of the overall ESA program in FY2025 is expected to be $872 million, the net cost after adjusting for where students would have otherwise attended is $350 million for those in the universal ESA voucher program. This represents a slight increase from the $332 million estimated by the Grand Canyon Institute last year.

The Grand Canyon Institute (GCI) estimates a $350 million net cost to the state’s General Fund in FY2025 (July 2024-June 2025) for the universal component of Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) voucher program based on a student’s school of origin. This represents a slight increase over the estimated FY2024 cost of $332 million. The estimate assumes basic student funding weights.

The Joint Legislative Budget Committee currently estimates the total annual cost of the ESA program to be $872 million, which includes the original targeted program and the universal component. Because student-level data on the universal program is not separated out by the Arizona Dept. of Education, GCI must estimate the origin of universal program enrollees. GCI’s estimate reflects the net cost the state would have incurred if the universal ESA voucher program did not exist. Almost every single child in the original targeted program had to attend a district or charter school for at least 45 days before enrolling in the program. GCI uses historical data on where the targeted students had come from previously, dating back to FY2017, along with current data on where all ESA students have left district or charter schools to estimate the distribution of students across district and charter schools for the original targeted program and the remainder are allocated to the universal program.

In FY2025, the net growth in the universal ESA vouchers was 7,660 of the total enrollment of 61,688. GCI estimates that 73% of ESA universal voucher recipients never attended a district or charter school, slightly lower than the rate of 80% in FY2025. This includes estimates for kindergarten students using ESA universal vouchers.

The primary driver of the change in FY2025 was a significant increase in the portion of net new enrollees from district and charter schools. GCI examined the marginal changes since last year and estimates that nearly half the net gain in universal participants of 7,660 from FY2024Q2 to FY2025Q2 came via Kindergarten. Analyzing changes in the portion of students previously attending a district or charter school, GCI estimates that less than 10% never attended (or would have never attended for Kindergarten) while half came from charter schools and just over 40% came from districts.

This change helped lessen the growth of the net cost of the program. GCI presumes that Kindergarten students do not have a record of prior attendance but would mirror the same distribution. Given that charter school enrollment is about one-fourth of district enrollment, charter schools have been significantly disproportionately impacted by the Universal ESA program.

Despite the change in FY2025, the majority of participants in the universal ESA program never attended a district or charter school should be self-evident. For FY2025, the Quarter 3 Executive and Legislative ESA report identifies that of the total 87,602 students enrolled in the ESA voucher program (targeted and universal), regardless of when they first enrolled, only 33,942 students moved from charter or district schools to an ESA. Virtually all targeted participants must first enroll in a district or charter school first. The universal program does not require prior attendance.

Access the full report here.

The Grand Canyon Institute, a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization, is a centrist think tank led by a bipartisan group of former state lawmakers, economists, community leaders and academicians. The Grand Canyon Institute serves as an independent voice reflecting a pragmatic approach to addressing economic, fiscal, budgetary and taxation issues confronting Arizona.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Data, Education Industry, Funding, School Choice, Students, Vouchers

Trump Tries to Cancel National History Day and Fails–This Year

By dianeravitch

June 13, 2025 //

Republicans have wanted to gut the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities for many years. In the past, they targeted the National Endowment for the Arts by focusing on artists whose work offended them. Somehow the Endowments managed to survive. But not this year. Elon Musk’s DOGS eliminated their funding. One victim of the cuts was National History Day, a competition that encourages the study of history.

Allison Dentzel of MSNBC reported:

This week, thousands of students traveled to the University of Maryland for the annual National History Day contest. However, this year’s competition celebrating America’s history almost didn’t happen after the Trump administration abruptly gutted the organizing nonprofit’s funding in April.

The organization received termination letters for its four-year grant totaling $650,000.

For more than 50 years, students at middle and high schools across the country attempt to qualify for the competition by submitting a historical research project based on that year’s theme. Students can write papers, prepare exhibits or performances, produce documentaries or create a website. After qualifying at the local and state levels, contestants are invited to take part in the national competition in College Park, Maryland.

But in April, the event was put in jeopardy after the Department of Government Efficiency terminated more than 1,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grants, including money for National History Day. The organization received termination letters for its four-year grant totaling $650,000, USA Today reported.

Without the government’s assistance and the competition just weeks away, the executive director of National History Day turned to social media. “We need your help,” Cathy Gorn said in a video posted to Instagram in early April. “We need to raise in the next few months about $132,000 to make History Day happen in June.”

Gorn’s public plea worked: NHD raised the money it needed, and about 3,000 students were able to present their projects on this year’s timely theme, “Rights and Responsibilities in History.”

“They are very in tune to what’s happening in the world, and they’re concerned, and they want to know more,” Gorn told USA Today. “And they’re drawn naturally to topics of fairness. So you’ll see a lot of civil rights, human rights, justice-type of topics here, but that’s so natural for a young person to kind of gravitate in that direction.”

While this year’s competition survived, the future of National History Day remains uncertain.

“Everybody is here, but I don’t know what next year is going to look like,” Gorn told USA Today. “It’ll be a horrible, horrible shame for kids and teachers not to be able to participate.”

Even though the fate of the 2026 competition is up in the air, NHD has selected its theme: “Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, History, Musk, Elon, Students, Trump

Aaron Tang: The Supreme Court Threatens Public Schools Even More Than Trump

By dianeravitch

April 15, 2025 //

Aaron Tang, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, explains how the U.S. Supreme Court is more dangerous to the future of public schools than Trump’s policies.

He writes in Politico:

The greatest threat to public education in America isn’t Donald Trump.

Yes, he’s moving to dismantle the Department of Education, and yes, he’s trying to restrict what schools can teach about race. But the most dangerous attack on the horizon isn’t coming from the president, it’s coming from the Supreme Court.

This is a particularly disheartening reality because the Supreme Court has often been one of public education’s greatest champions. As far back as 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, the court described public schooling as “the very foundation of good citizenship” and the “most important function of state and local governments.” Just four years ago, in an 8-1 opinion involving a Snapchatting cheerleader, the court proudly declared that “Public schools are the nurseries of democracy.”

Later this month, however, the court will hear oral argument in a pair of cases with the potential to radically destabilize public schools as we know them. And there is reason to be deeply worried about how the conservative majority will rule.

The first case, Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, poses the question of whether the 46 states with charter schools must offer public funds to schools that would teach religious doctrine as truth. The second case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, involves the claim that religious parents should have a right to opt their children out of controversial public school curricula.

Takentogether, Drummond and Mahmoud threaten the twin cornerstones of the American education system that Brown affirmed six decades ago: Since Brown, America’s public schools have operated under a norm of inclusive enrollment, and they’ve offered all children a shared curriculum that reflects the values that communities believe are essential for civic participation and economic success.

If the court tears down these foundational norms, the schools that remain in their wake will be a shell of the democracy-promoting institution the court itself has long lionized — and that healthy majorities of parents continue to support in their local neighborhoods. And although there’s a way to avoid the worst outcome in both cases, the path ahead is uncertain: It will require the court to follow history in an evenhanded manner (in Drummond) and progressives to accept a middle ground (in Mahmoud).

The legal challenges presented in Drummond and Mahmoud did not arise out of thin air. They are part of a long-term conservative movement strategy aimed at eroding public education.

A major component of this strategy has been a consistent call to fund school choice, a broad umbrella term that encompasses various programs such as school vouchers and educational savings accounts that channel taxpayer dollars away from traditional public schools and into private ones. Drummond’s call for a constitutional right to taxpayer-funded religious education can thus be thought of as a major front in Project 2025’s “core principle” of “significantly advanc[ing] education choice.”

Conservatives have likewise sought to brand public schools as purveyors of “woke” ideology rather than facilitators of a shared set of community values. The claim at issue in Mahmoud — a parental right to opt out of curricular choices that some find religiously objectionable — is accordingly another salvo in the broader culture wars, and one in which conservatives are asking the court to grant them a legal trump card.

Ultimately, to a significant cross-section of the Republican Party, public schools are now the “radical, anti-American” enemy. And viewed from that perspective, Drummond and Mahmoud may represent the greatest chance for delivering a knockout blow.

Drummond and Inclusive Enrollment

Technically, the Drummond case is just about Oklahoma. That’s because it arose out of Oklahoma’s refusal to fund a religious charter school named the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. (According to St. Isidore’s handbook, “the traditions and teachings of the Catholic Church and the virtue of Christian living permeate the school day.”)

But make no mistake: It is blue states that have the most to lose in this case. For if St. Isidore has a right to public funding in Oklahoma, that same right would exist for religious charter schools in California and New York — places where, until now, taxpayer funds have never been used to teach religion as truth to K-12 students.

It is hard to overstate how big a sea change this would be. Nonreligious charter schools currently receive more than $26 billion in public funds and educate some four million children. So a ruling in favor of religious charter schools could mean billions of dollars for religious education — a prospect that one Catholic school executive called “game-changing” for how it would enable religious schools to “grow [their] network.”

But the implications are far more than monetary. They strike at the very vision of public schools as places where children come together from all walks of life to learn what the Supreme Court once called the “values on which our society rests.” Bankrolled by taxpayer dollars, Drummond would transform the American education system into a taxpayer-funded mechanism for transmitting each family’s preferred religious tenets.

What is more, religious charter schools will likely argue that they have a further Free Exercise right to restrict enrollment only to adherents of their particular faith (indeed, a religious private school in Maine has already advanced this claim). At the end of that argument is a publicly funded K-12 education system that tribalizes the American people at a time when we need to be doing exactly the opposite: forging bonds of connection across our differences.

Justice Thurgood Marshall once cautioned that “unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together.” If the court rules for the religious charter schools in Drummond, we will come one giant — and regrettable — step closer to the world Marshall feared.

Mahmoud and the Attack on Curriculum

The Mahmoud case emerged out of a 2022 Montgomery County, Maryland, school board policy that introduced a new set of LGBTQ-inclusive storybooks into its pre-K through 12th-grade language arts curriculum. In general, the books aimed at instilling respect and civility for people from different backgrounds. In practice, though, the books led to controversy. One of the books, entitled Pride Puppy, was directed at pre-K students and invited students to search for images of a lip ring and a drag queen.

Montgomery County initially permitted parents to opt their children out of reading these new books. But the district soon changed course, which is what led the Mahmoud family to sue. Their argument was that the Free Exercise Clause grants parents like them the “right to opt their children out of public school instruction that would substantially interfere with their religious development.”

This is a truly difficult case, even for someone who, like me, holds an unyielding commitment to ensuring that all LGBTQ students feel safe at school. But one can hold that commitment while also acknowledging that the choice to force children as young as five years old to read books like Pride Puppy over their parents’ objection is not an obvious one. Indeed, Montgomery County has since removed Pride Puppy from its curriculum — a reasonable concession.

The great danger in this case, though, is not about the parental right to opt 5- and 6-year-olds out of controversial curricula. It’s that a decision recognizing a parental opt-out right would be difficult to contain via a sensible limiting principle. Would parents of middle or high school children enjoy a similar right to opt their children out of any assignment or reading that espouses support for LGBTQ rights? How about a right to opt out of science classes that teach biology or evolution? And what of history classes that some religious parents may find too secular for their liking?

In all of those contexts, lower federal courts had unanimously rejected the contention that simply because a parent finds something to be religiously objectionable, they can excuse their child from a shared curricular goal. Mahmoud could upend that settled consensus and replace it with a world in which public schools are forced to offer bespoke curricula to all different families based on their particular religious commitments.

That’s a recipe for an education system that would certainly teach some values to our children. But this much is for sure: They would no longer be shared ones.

How to Save Public Education at the Court

The plaintiffs in both Drummond and Mahmoud may be optimistic that the 6-3 conservative supermajority will side with them. After all, religious litigants have fared remarkably well at the Supreme Court of late.

But a surprising obstacle exists in the Drummond case — and Maryland officials, if they are smart, may yet have the final word in Mahmoud.

In Drummond, the best argument against the claimed Free Exercise right to taxpayer-funded religious schools comes from the very place that the conservative Supreme Court has lately looked to move the law right on abortion and guns: history and tradition.

As Ethan Hutt, a leading historian of education, and I show in a forthcoming paper, it turns out the denial of funding that St. Isidore complains of today is something that happened routinely during the founding era. Yet no one — no parent, no religious leader, not even a religious school that was denied funds on equal terms with its nonsectarian counterparts — ever filed a lawsuit (much less won one) arguing that the right to Free Exercise demanded otherwise.

This is precisely the historic pattern that the Supreme Court relied on to reject the right to abortion in Dobbs: “When legislators began to [ban abortion in the 19th century], no one, as far as we are aware, argued that [they had] violated a fundamental right.”

If the absence of legal contestation in the face of government action 200 years ago shows that the Constitution’s original meaning does not encompass a claimed right to abortion, it’s hard to see why that logic should differ when the claimed right involves religious school funding. Put simply, the court can be consistently originalist, or it can recognize the religious charter school funding right claimed in Drummond. But it can’t do both.

The legal argument to protect public education is less clear in Mahmoud. But in that case, there is another way to steer clear of a Supreme Court ruling that would imperil evolution, biology, history and LGBTQ-inclusive lessons in the upper grades: Maryland officials can override the Montgomery County policy and extend an opt-out choice to parents of young children like the Mahmouds.

There would be clear precedent for such an action by the state. After New York officials took a similar step to eliminate a policy dispute in a major gun case in 2020, the court dismissed that case as moot — putting off a dangerous ruling for at least the time being.

Of course, doing so would require lawmakers in Maryland to accept parents of young children choosing to withdraw their children from reading controversial LGBTQ-inclusive books. But perhaps lawmakers can see a principled distinction between the desire to make schools a safe space for LGBTQ children — a nonnegotiable, core value — and the desire to use elementary school classrooms as a tool for changing hearts and minds on controversial topics more generally.

In truth, progressives were probably never going to win that battle in kindergarten classrooms, especially with the present political climate. Progress on social attitudes concerning the transgender community was always more likely through the same mechanisms that produced rapid change for the gay and lesbian community — mainstream media, social media and the critical realization that our friends, family and other loved ones are members of these different communities and deserve equal respect.

In the end, the Supreme Court may choose simply to ignore history and tradition in Drummond, where it is inconvenient for a movement conservative cause. And a policy change in Maryland could simply delay the inevitable, as new cases could always be brought advancing

The bigger takeaway, then, is about the war against public education and its likely toll. Public schools were a major part of what made America great. So in seeking public education’s demise, the Drummond and Mahmoud cases could portend staggering consequences: less social tolerance, reduced international competitiveness and continued inequality along economic and racial lines.

But the greatest cost may be for our democracy. After all, the Supreme Court reminded us just four short years ago that public schools are where our democracy is cultivated. That’s why the timing of these cases could not be any worse. In a moment when American democracy is being tested like never before, the court should be the last institution — not the leading one — to dismantle our public schools.

Categories Censorship, Curriculum, Democracy, Ethics, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, History, Injustice, Parents, Religion, Students

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The near obliteration of democratic public schooling

Shadow suspensions and ‘behavior problems’

Community-rooted educators replaced by managers

The cruel reality of ‘choice’

Propaganda masquerading as research….

The Numbers Don’t Add Up

The Human Cost

When ‘Success’ Crumbles

The Illusion of Choice

Special Education Crisis

Economic Verdict

Missing Pieces

The Honest Assessment

Drummond and Inclusive Enrollment

Mahmoud and the Attack on Curriculum

How to Save Public Education at the Court

Search All Posts

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